AP reporter Matt Lee sparred with a State Department spokesperson who insisted the administration was adequately briefed on a side deal between the IAEA and Iran, despite not having read it. “We haven’t received a written copy of it, but we have been briefed on its contents,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said. “So someone with a photographic memory has looked at it and copied everything down in their brain and then repeated it up on the Hill?” Lee asked. The Obama administration has defended this anti-transparency measure, calling it standard practice and objecting to the term “secret deal.”...

It's time for someone on TV to step up and take Donald Trump down — or, at least, put him in his place.. The situation has not risen to the level of Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. But it's definitely in a league with Katie Couric and Sarah Palin. And every day that Trump gets away with driving the vast majority of political coverage on network and cable TV with his reckless, tabloid-style attacks and unsubstantiated claims is another day that the nation loses in having an informed discussion about where it wants to go in terms of...

Reporter and weekend news anchor Tom Murray is leaving WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) to join the ministry staff at Oak Creek Assembly of God church. Murray made the announcement on his Facebook page Sunday morning, saying he's joining the church staff at the end of August. Murray joined WTMJ in 2007. A Portage, Mich., native, he is the anchor on the station's Saturday and Sunday morning news shows, and a general assignment reporter.... Murray and his wife, Jennifer, are active in Oak Creek Assembly of God's young adult, drama and Sunday school ministries. "My Christian faith is the source of happiness...

Fox News television host Bill O’Reilly sent an anonymous reporter to San Francisco on Tuesday to approach local politicians about the tragic murder of Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14. A segment on last night’s “O’Reilly Factor” shows two supervisors immediately brushing off the television network, while one delivered a terse response. Fox approached Supervisor Wiener at City Hall saying,” I don’t want to be a pest it’s just literally a minute…” Wiener quickly cut off the interviewer saying, “Fox News is not real news and you’re not a reporter.” Wiener told SFGate that “tea party” members are flooding him with...

IM Global and producers State Street Pictures have launched production in Chicago on “Southside With You,” the romantic dramedy inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. The film is focused on the 1989 date when a young Obama — portrayed by Parker Sawyers — was trying to woo lawyer Michelle Robinson (played by Tika Sumpter) on a summer afternoon and evening. The date took place at the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and their first kiss outside of an ice cream parlor.

When it was announced that the parents of Kathryn Steinle, were going to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s national news show, it was hard to imagine what they were going to say. And it didn’t go the way anyone expected. Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan are understandably lost in grief. But the Pleasanton couple didn’t say we need to tighten the borders or crack down on undocumented immigrants. They slipped into Fox News-speak a couple of times, saying “illegal aliens,” a jarring term that has long passed, like “colored people,” into the realm of pejorative. And I suppose it is also...

As a lifelong reader of newspapers, and a devoted follower of the journalism profession, although not a part of it, I am sad to write this. It's like a eulogy for a body long dead but failed to be given a proper burial. Or like the M. Night Shyamalan movie "The Sixth Sense," where Bruce Willis' character walks the earth as a dead man until a boy who can see dead people leads him to realize his own fate and depart. Large, centralized news gathering operations are dead. The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, USA Today--all the old-line...

The Supreme Court could not have been clearer when it ruled late last month that states may not refuse to marry same-sex couples. But in several states where the resistance to marriage equality has been most entrenched, government officials whose job it is to license or perform marriages continue to misunderstand, stall or flatly defy the court. However they justify these tactics, their conduct is illegal and they must stop. These public employees seem to forget that taxpayers pay them to do their job. If doing that job violates his or her religious beliefs, the best solution is to find...

In her 1985 speech after receiving the Best Actress Oscar for her role in "Places in the Heart," actress Sally Field famously gushed, "You like me; you really, really like me." The latest in a long history of surveys examining the public's level of trust in the news media might paraphrase Field's line this way: "You hate us; you really, really hate us, but we don't care." The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey, a project of the Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center, has "discovered" what most of us could have told them. According to the survey, "Only 24...

Wow. The media just allowed a bogus AP hit job on Cosby to happen. He did not admit to what AP insinuates he did. It editorializes with commentary from the PLAINTIFF'S LAWYER. It also notes that two other women took quaaludes voluntarily. At NO TIME does Cosby state that he gave *anything* to *anyone* involuntarily. A question that is unanswered because of an objection means NOTHING. It is NOT an admission of anything, folks. They want you to leap to a conclusion unsupported by any evidence. This is NOT a smoking gun. He admitted that he took quaaludes for sex,...

Every once in a while there comes along a candidate who is head and shoulders above the rest. Such a person is Senator Ted Cruz. He is that rare candidate who stands his ground, does not intimidate, never loses his cool and is, above all, always a gentlemen. Everyone who is anyone in the liberal media has been having interviews with Cruz. Not because they are so enamored of the Senator, but more because they are on a mission-a mission to trip him up, catch him off-guard, back him into a wall. They haven't been successful yet. Cruz is fully...

“What I’ve got is F*****G Golden,” said jailed Democrat Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. He was referring to his opportunity to appoint an IL senator to Congress after then Senator Barack Obama became President in 2009. Well, pardon my hubris, but what I have is Golden also, in today’s Hades of Politically Correct Journalism. I have a FIFTIES JOURNALISM DEGREE from that same state, Illinois. Therefore, permit me to advise you budding cub reporters and “J Skul” students of some imperatives I was taught way back when Dinosaurs roamed Wright Street into Greg Hall. “Just the Facts, ma’am; Just the Facts,”...

In America, “accuracy, honesty, transparency, impartiality, and accountability,” went out the day Obama came in The country infamous for its running dog-mainstream media cheering anything Obama in a cacophony of barks, including the “fundamental transformation” of their own country, is now branching out through its State Department to the world. Bureaucrats of the U.S. State Department, who have already taken it upon themselves to teach “ethics” to the “up and coming journalists” of India, are going to “embed” up-and-coming Russian journalists in American newsrooms. Having gained control of the mainstream media on home turf, why not try for world media...

Now that the United States has "normalized" relations with Cuba, which was taken off of the State Department terror sponsor list this week, journalism professors from American universities are starting to train students inside the communist country. Despite the liberal leanings of the professors embarking on this task, this is a very good thing. Press freedom and holding government accountable through the sunlight of reporters are two fundamental principles of a free society. Because of this, despite "normalization" and a "new era," the Castro regime still counts practicing journalism as a crime. It's not just that they are studying journalism...

The economic recovery is really coming along great. For the third time since the expansion began in June 2009, the U.S. economy suffered a setback. Don’t call it a setback. It’s a strategic retreat. Those ‘optimistic’ estimates keep being revised. Such declines in GDP are rare in economic expansions, pointing to the fragile nature of the current rebound. The economy hasn’t contracted in three different quarters during good times since the 1950s. It’s the fault of the GOP. Also the weather. That’s the weakest reading since frigid winter temperatures derailed growth at the start of 2014. We can’t have an...

WBRZ reporter Brett Buffington was arrested after a run-in with officers at the scene of a burglary investigation Thursday morning. According to The Advocate, the Baton Rouge, La. ABC affiliate’s reporter was booked on counts of interfering with an officer and intimidating a public official. Police placed Buffington in the back of a police unit until the area was made safe, the report says. Buffington was then issued a criminal summons and told he was free to leave, to which he told an officer, “Hope you enjoy the rest of your career.” The report says the officer took the comment...

FACT CHECKER: “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. Al Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president.” Bush seems to have fallen prey to Washington conventional wisdom, in which ISIS suddenly emerged into consciousness in the past year or so. That may be fine for armchair analysts or journalists. But that’s little excuse for a presidential candidate, who might have to grapple with this problem if he or she is elected president. With some fine-tuning of his statement, Bush could have made the case that Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq, combined with the president’s...

By now, I assume most of you have figured out that I’m not a huge fan of Sen. Ted Cruz. I’m even less of a fan, however, of what passes for journalism in this country these days, by which I mean the shallow, image-driven, trivia-obsessed folderol that seeks to find the “gotchas” in the most ridiculous things. Did Obama ordering orange juice on the campaign trail mean he’s not a “regular guy” who can relate to the kind of simpletons these overpaid celebrity journalists assume we are? Did Hillary Clinton not tipping in a diner mean she’s insensitive to working...

Full title..."Not how they roll: Pentagon asks media to scrap old footage of ISIS columns" ISIS may be on the move, but not the way you see on television, claims the Pentagon. Footage of the menacing, black-clad terrorist army rolling across the desert in long convoys predates U.S.-led air strikes that have forced the jihadists to travel more discreetly, say senior State Department and Pentagon officials. They have asked television networks to stop using stock footage that makes the terror army seem more mobile - and more formidable - than they say it actually is. “One Toyota speeding down the...

President Obama is taking heat for calling for changes in "how the media reports," during an anti-poverty event where he also took a swipe at Fox News. At the Georgetown University discussion on Tuesday, Obama lamented how, sometimes, the poor are cast as "sponges" who don't want to work. "I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu -- they will find folks who make me mad," Obama said. "I don't know where they find them. They're like, I don't want to work, I just want a free Obama phone...

America is crumbling before our eyes. Once, the U.S. was the envy of the world with its modern roads, airports, railroad bridges and other infrastructure. Everything was first-class. Now, it’s third-rate. An Amtrak passenger train derailed Tuesday in Philadelphia, killing at least seven passengers. The investigation into the crash is only beginning, and it’s too early to say what caused it. But it’s not too early to say that Amtrak’s crumbling infrastructure didn’t help matters. “It’s an extremely heavily used stretch of track,” transportation analyst Matthew L. Wald told CNN, referring to the area where the train derailed Tuesday night....

Little Rock journalist Suzi Parker, author of “Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt" and a former contributor to Salon, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News and other outlets, recently self-published her first novel, "Echo Ellis: Adventures of a Girl Reporter," about "a Southern reporter living in Bill Clinton's Arkansas who often finds herself in dangerous yet thrilling situations." As Parker put it in a recent interview, "Echo is my alter ego. She has many adventures that I may or may not have had in my life." Check out the noir book trailer above, in which she describes...

Just when you think the GOP might modernize, the knuckles start dragging again, this time on immigration and trade. It’s political suicide. If you want to see where the impulse to reform the Republican Party in a more libertarian direction of limited government, social tolerance, and free markets goes to die, look no further than the recent attacks on immigration and freer trade by Jeff Sessions, the influential senator from Alabama. Every time the GOP seems finally ready to orient itself in a forward-looking, post-culture-war direction, some holdover from an America that never quite existed to begin with blows his...

The transparency standards for an NFL quarterback rising higher than for the Secretary of State surely speaks to the bread-and-circuses quality of 2015 America. We expect more from our gridiron heroes than from our nation’s leaders. Perhaps the tizzy over Tom serves as a tacit admission that we also expect more responsiveness to public opinion from 345 Park Ave. than from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. No law decrees that a quarterback must turn over his texts and emails to the NFL the way that the Federal Records Act demands that the Secretary of State turn over correspondence to the government. Yet...

Global warming will eventually push 1 out of every 13 species on Earth into extinction, a new study projects. It won't quite be as bad in North America, where only 1 in 20 species will be killed off because of climate change or Europe where the extinction rate is nearly as small. But in South America, that forecasted heat-caused extinction rate soars to 23 percent, the worst for any continent, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science. University of Connecticut ecologist Mark Urban compiled and analyzed 131 peer-reviewed studies on species that used various types of...

Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis. In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate. “We have the choice,” he said in an interview. “The world can decide where on that curve they want the future Earth to be.” If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to grow, climate researchers project the world could warm by...

A YOUNG student from Seattle has been revealed as a senior female ISIS agent responsible for recruiting women to join the terror group. On Twitter, she is known as @_UmmWaqqas, and is pictured shrouded head-to-toe in black; an inscrutable and high-ranking officer of ISIS who boasts more than 8000 followers online, and is in close contact with the British, Americans and the jihadi brides in Syria. Channel 4 News has since revealed her identity as a woman in her 20s who went to school in the US, and by her friends’ accounts grew up as a regular teenager in a...

The GOP 2016 field may still be picking its way through suitable campaign messaging on immigration, but activists already are defining their party's approach to reform: "Mass Deportation." On the same day that House Republicans were holding a hearing on whether people born in the U.S. should get automatic citizenship, immigration and civil rights activists affixed that brand to Republicans in Congress and by extension, the party's 2016 hopefuls. "The GOP-controlled Congress has all but cemented its anti-immigrant legacy and may meet its destiny in 2016," the activists said in a report they released Wednesday with the words "Mass Deportation"...

CNN ranked #2 in cable news in April, easily topping MSNBC in Total Day among both total viewers and adults 25-54, and M-Su and M-F primetime in the demo 25-54. The network has now beaten MSNBC for 10 straight months in Total Day among both total viewers and the demo. CNN Program Highlights: The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (5-7pm) ranked #2 in cable news in the demo (157k) ahead of MSNBC by +134% (67k) and up +9% vs. year ago, while MSNBC was down by -54%. Erin Burnett Outfront (7pm) easily beat MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews in the...

New York Times ^ | April 27, 2015 | By ROBERTO SURO and MARCELO M. SUÁREZ-OROZCO

SOMETHING happened while the immigration system in the United States got broken, something that should change the way we talk about fixing it. Years went by, and nature took its course. More than 11 million unauthorized immigrants settled into our communities; many formed families and had children. Now at least one of every 15 children living in the United States has an unauthorized parent, and nearly all of those children are native-born United States citizens. Think of that statistic, one in 15, the next time you drive by a school or a playground. Think of those children living with the...

Good news for Obamacare supporters: It's quite a bit less unpopular than it was a few months ago. The uptick leads to the question: Will the Affordable Care Act ever actually be popular? Looking at the long run, Republicans may have done the law a favor by naming it Obamacare. Former presidents usually bask in a nostalgic glow after they leave office. While events could still make a difference, Obama is well-positioned to take advantage of that effect: To date, at least, he has no major wars to regret, and the nation hasn't plunged into a new recession. If long-term...

‘Liars like Us’ J School: Heads up to the unsuspecting people of India: The liars of the U.S. State Department have taken it upon themselves to teach “ethics” to your nation’s upcoming journalists. Don’t get caught up in the controversy that it “has even proposed appropriating the name of Robin Thicke’s 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” as a title for the course. It’s not the name of the course, that could just as easily be called “Liars like us”, but what the course is teaching that’s the clear and present danger:

There was something bracingly honest about an op-ed article in The Washington Post last week by Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican. Under the headline “America Needs to Curb Immigration Flows,” Mr. Sessions, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary’s immigration subcommittee, argued the case for letting in fewer foreigners. Mr. Sessions, ditching the usual Republican talking points on immigration, choosing instead to echo an uglier time in our history, when nativists wielded the spurious argument that the more immigrants taken in by America, the worse off America is. He’s advocating for “slowing the pace” of legal immigration, supposedly to increase...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s freshly minted presidential campaign is still looking for traction following the mainstream media's manufactured headlines concerning his ill treatment of female reporters. While there are certainly many Republican primary voters who will appreciate and applaud his aggressive interview style, the media’s reshaping of events as new evidence of the GOP’s phony war on women are likely to resonate with a slice of the more moderate electorate he needs to win in November, 2016 should he become the party’s nominee. But Paul can turn this to his advantage by recognizing the core truth of this media exercise;...

Around Christmas, Hillary Rodham Clinton set off on her annual holiday vacation at Oscar de la Renta's beachfront estate in the Dominican Republic. De la Renta, whose relationship with the former first lady had blossomed from dress designer to close friend, had recently died and Clinton wanted to be there to support his widow. She was also wrestling with a final decision on whether to run for president. By the time Clinton arrived in the Dominican Republic, she had largely settled on running a second campaign, but wanted to make the final determination with her husband, Bill. Friends fret over...

Marco Rubio, who announced his bid for the presidency on Monday in a call to donors, has been called the “best communicator” in the Republican Party. Over and over and over again. But he has little to show for it. He enters the fray with surprisingly low support. Despite four years of national prominence, he has averaged 6 percent of the vote in primary polls over the last few months. That’s the same or worse than five candidates who are thought to have a much smaller chance of winning the nomination: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee and...

ULAN-UDE, Russia -- Journalists at a Siberian newspaper say they spent three days using scissors to cut an article about a Russian soldier who was wounded fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine out of 50,000 copies of the publication. Tank crewman Dorzhi Batonmukuyev's accounts of fighting in eastern Ukraine have added to what Kyiv and NATO say are incontrovertible evidence of direct Russian military support for the rebels in a conflict with government forces that has killed more than 6,000 people since April 2014. Russia denies it has sent troops or weapons into Ukraine.

You know, the Ten Commandments, it says you can’t commit adultery; it says you need to honor your father and mother. If someone didn’t honor their parents or commit adultery, would you serve them?” This question was posed by CNN reporter Gary Tuchman to Georgia florist Melissa Jeffcoat, who had previously said she’d refuse to service a homosexual commitment ceremony. When she answered affirmatively and was pressed on why (supposedly) she’d serve adulterers and those dishonoring their parents but not homosexuals, she replied, “It’s just a different kind of sin to me. I just don’t believe in it.” Tuchman surely...

Laurence H. Tribe, the highly regarded liberal scholar of constitutional law, still speaks of President Obama as a proud teacher would of a star student. “He was one of the most amazing research assistants I’ve ever had,” Mr. Tribe said in a recent interview. Mr. Obama worked for him at Harvard Law School, where Mr. Tribe has taught for four decades. Many in the Obama administration and at Harvard are bewildered and angry that Mr. Tribe, who argued on behalf of Al Gore in the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, has emerged as the leading legal opponent of...

WASHINGTON -- His hair almost fully gray now, his tone somber but earnestly hopeful, President Barack Obama stood in the White House Rose Garden Thursday and made a case for the centerpiece of his second term, for his vision of how to handle dangerous enemies, and for his own role in history. This was Obama at his own personal summit, carrying out what he views as his destiny: a coolly practical peacemaker. Invoking three Cold War presidents -- John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan -- the 53-year-old Obama, still young by global statesman standards, claimed to have reached,...

Several prominent, openly gay athletes will be among those protesting the new Indiana religious freedom law this week, despite Gov. Mike Pence’s promise to "fix" the law before the Final Four begins on Saturday, according to local activists. Olympic diving legend Greg Louganis and former NBA player Jason Collins are among those coming to the state this week for press conferences or other public events. The effort to keep attention on the law around the college basketball showcase in Indianapolis. Rick Sutton, a veteran LGBT organizer and activist based in Indiana, said those who are upset by the new law...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- The Arkansas House of Representatives passed a "religious freedom" bill similar to the controversial measure in Indiana. The bill now heads to Gov. Asa Hutchinson's desk for signing into law. Hutchinson said that he would approve the measure if it made it to his office, CBS News affiliate KTVH in Little Rock reported. The Arkansas version of the bill -- HB 1228 -- would prevent state and local governments from infringement on someone's religious beliefs unless there were a "compelling" reason. Like the Indiana law, opponents say it would foster discrimination against the gay and lesbian...

In 1997, in the City of Boerne v. Flores decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) did not apply to the states. Since 1993, 20 states have enacted state RFRAs. These laws are intended to echo the federal RFRA, but are not necessarily identical to the federal law. Indiana is the most recent state to enact a RFRA, doing so this year. Sixteen states have introduced legislation this year regarding the creation of, or alteration to, a state religious freedom law. Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas currently have a RFRA, but have introduced...

To listen to talk radio and cable television, which are dominated by conservatives, the national and state debates over immigration give the impression that most legal residents of the state of California oppose immigrant workers here illegally and might even be favorably disposed to Mitt Romney's suggestion that they "self-deport." As it turns out, however, the voices of anti-immigration forces are disproportionately louder than their actual numbers. A new poll of likely California voters shows that a whopping 73% support granting citizenship to immigrants here illegally if they agreed to pay back taxes, pass a background check and learn the...

Four journalists arrested during last summer's Ferguson protests over the shooting death of Michael Brown filed a federal lawsuit Monday against St. Louis County police and 20 of its officers, accusing them of violating the reporters' civil rights and unjustifiably detaining them. The lawsuit, filed Monday in St. Louis, alleges the arrests for the journalists' failure to disperse as demanded by police on Aug. 18 and Aug. 19 were "undertaken with the intention of obstructing, chilling, deterring, and retaliating against (the) plaintiffs for engaging in constitutionally protected speech, newsgathering and recording of police activities." The plaintiffs include Ryan Devereaux of...

The headline to this story is an adage taught by journalism schools throughout the country. News is supposed to be based on facts and reported without bias. But alas, reporters are human and have biases, acknowledged or not. If they are blatant and obvious, then we can dismiss them out of hand, (example: Chris Matthews saying, "I felt this thrill going up my leg," when listening to a speech given by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama). But watch out when supposed news items align with a cultural bias. Reporters should apply skepticism to everything they report on. Otherwise, emotionally charged stories...

“Think just how different the world would be,” said Senator Ted Cruz on Monday, in a speech so packed with vision-spinning and the word “imagine” that it seemed as if John Lennon had returned, as a Hispanic Texan running a hard-right, anti-establishment, Christian-themed campaign for the White House. Weird. But weird is the essence of Mr. Cruz, who is now the first major Republican in the 2016 race. The “imagines” that Mr. Cruz doled out were well chosen for his audience, students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Robust cheers greeted one of the first: “Imagine young people coming out...

Several months ago, your GetReligionistas created our "What is this?" logo to salute a question that we have found ourselves asking over and over during the past decade. Here's the deal. So you are reading something in a newspaper or online source that is supposed to be producing old-school hard news. Then you hit a passage or two that, simply stated, are wildly opinionated or built on what appears to be secret information, without a source that is shared with readers. In other words, you hit a patch of blatant opinion in the middle of a "news" article, like a...

[The St. Petersburg Times in Russia appears to have stopped publishing new articles since January 2015] Russian Businessman Buys 'Leviathan' Skeleton for Moscow Lawn The St. Petersburg Times Published: January 31, 2015 (Issue # 1844) Translation Is New Weapon in Propaganda War By Michele A. Berdy The St. Petersburg Times Published: January 31, 2015 (Issue # 1844) Russians Say They Fear Hunger, Unemployment and Nuclear War By Anna Dolgov The St. Petersburg Times Published: January 31, 2015 (Issue # 1844)

Traditional media has been on a downward slide for some time now, with cutbacks taking place in newsrooms at papers, magazines and cable television outlets. This makes for a tighter job market for those following the traditional J-school path and that new reality seems to be setting in at Columbia. One of the oldest journalism schools in the nation is downsizing. Columbia UniversityÂ’s Graduate School of Journalism will reduce its class size and cut about six positions from its staff as the news industry retrenches.The school will gradually reduce enrollment over several years and has already stopped filling some...